


Captain DeSoto and the Queen of the Iconoclasts

by IrreWilderer



Series: “L’habit ne fait pas le moine” [8]
Category: The Outer Worlds (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Multi, Scientism, Smut, Threesome - F/M/M, and max is king of the hill, drunk philosophy talk, max is the meat in a dissident sandwich, philosophism, the captain has become a companion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:22:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26742823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IrreWilderer/pseuds/IrreWilderer
Summary: Archimedes Quaice hasn't been on the Unreliable in two weeks.
Relationships: Graham Bryant/Maximillian DeSoto, The Captain/Graham Bryant, The Captain/Maximillian DeSoto, The Captain/Maximillian DeSoto/Graham Bryant
Series: “L’habit ne fait pas le moine” [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1540777
Comments: 18
Kudos: 10





	1. Chapter 1

Archie lay mid-cot. She caught shiver; shimmied deeper. The ratted, recycled, sewn-together conglomerate of clothing-cum-blanket came to her chin and she sighed, mindful of the mightsome chores awaiting her feet to find boots. Having passed a fortnight of furlough among the Iconoclasts, mornings were the precious few ‘Me’ moments she could afford—cherished like her stash of pharmaceuticals and savored just the same. Elsewise, Archie was hoofing here and yonder, doing for Graham Bryant what needed done.

The list was long. Routing out grub, organizing resources, putting together parties aimed at either hunting or domestics: while Graham extended the Iconoclasts’ reach beyond their walls, Archie and Zora Blackwood took turns putting something more tangible into that hand offered to Halcyon’s wayward. Droves came to their doors, but they could only feed so many, shelter so much, and Archie—Archie’s charity was exhausted already, alongside her sorry keister.

It was the stagnation. Their progress had reduced to a slump. Early on, following her transfer of captainish fussings to the vicar, which was forced by her leaving the Unreliable, Graham’s orders led to a laying-out of the C&P factory workers on the cement floor. Taking reins leading to tended stomachs meant stability should have followed. Serious shelters; actual gardens: she’d lied, once, and said it was what she wanted—an acreage of her own—yet with that dream dangled afront, Archie reached out.

But Graham’s concern was the freedom of minds. Physical necessities could be sorted by one’s own self (though rarely a body knew how, having nursed to dependency at a corporate tit). Practicalities became paltry in the face of freedom fighting, meaning, despite however guarded, the C&P Factory was neglected. The factory animals had probably passed, and people were famishing afresh. Archie was all for helping folk, yet this false hope weren’t hers to give; this _insufficiency_ wasn’t hers to fight at. Graham had a right to lead to his tastes—it wasn’t Archie’s responsibility to keep brow-beating the brick wall of his ways—so she was leaving. Having tried, she was high-tailing to allow the Iconoclasts to live as they liked. It wasn’t her duty to tell them elsewise.

“Hello.”

Archie’s bleary sight went for whence the soft, shy voice came.

“Morning,” she sniffed.

There was neither—soft nor shyness—beyond the lilt at Graham’s small mouth. His soft and shy stopped at his comfortable smirk, so cozied because he’d been the one who left her there, rumpled under the covers. _Glowing_.

Despite scarcity of prudence, his vision was appealing. Graham’s failing was the power he wielded, which he did not do well, but as a man—just a man—he was mighty enticing about the wide, rough hands, his rougher, wiling thighs, and soft-spoken charm. Past the discoursing verbosity of a practised periodical editor, he espoused an enticing individuality, as well as living beyond moderation of the Board. Sharing, caring; destruction of classism: if he could cut the dialectic crap, Graham might rule the damn system, one day. Or, leastways, a moon or two.

Walking over, he sat on the side of the cot. Tawny eyes traveled across hers, and to her cheek, which he touched. “It is no longer morning. It is into the afternoon,” he informed, drawing hair behind her ear.

Archie sat up.

Grabbing for the gnarled Rizzo belt-bag on the bedside table, her fingers symphonied forth a clinking of glass and metallics. Liquid-form Level Head; an Adreno-Time syringe: she’d follow a shot with a swig, the singularly sweet conflation having become as routine as morning coffee. Singular purpose all-fired her veins while the Level Head kept her focused, and Archie couldn’t fathom how Zora saw the day without her own breakfast blend of specifics.

Swabbing an injection spot with salt-vinegar disinfectant, she put the needle to her skin. “I’m surprised I was let ‘lone that long.”

“After your sickness, I speculated a decent sleep would do you good.”

Archie dismissed this around a swill of Level Head. “It’s not sleep that’s going to help.” She swallowed another capful. “It’s getting off this planet.”

Her doses conferring, the day’s responsibilities lined up like so many employees for role-call. Archie’s grey matter dealt with those, cogitating on the more important duties, but she also mused over how Monarch’s toxicity would be the perfect excuse to vamoose. If she needed an excuse. The sulphur had her airing the paunch most days. It got into everything. She’d schemed to sort out their air filtration systems, but they lacked the equipment to do it. Another Iconoclast dream decayed by sour vapors.

“Well, now that you’re medicated,” crooned Graham, “there _is_ something I could use your help with.”

Archie brightened, counting the usual freckles across his face. “And that is?”

“A small trip to Stellar Bay, nothing more. Zora is there, now, attempting to sway a local contact into selling us supplies. But I’m assuming she’s met a dead end as I’ve had no word from her. Should you meet with her, you might both convince them of our views.” Graham sighed. “Though Stellar Bay has thrown off their master’s shackles in the past, still they would make slaves of the rest of us. Or, worse, canids begging for scraps.”

Legs pendulous off the bed, Archie parked close to his side, her chin set on his bulking shoulder and her voice playing pacifying whisper. “You know I can’t go. My ride’ll be here in a few hours. Can’t keep them waiting.”

“Ah, yes. Your chariot. I’d forgotten.” Finger trailing along her jaw, he stroked her chin, cupping it. Graham’s tone espoused that charismatizing confidence which had convinced so many to split from corporate. “But you’ll come back to me, won’t you.”

His tawny eyes were full of knowing. Archie just smiled. Kissing him, she tasted mockapple.

The doings that followed Archie’s wriggling into dirty duds (and reasonably spic-span scanties) were washed of details by her liquid lunch, leaving it all in a glowing, specifics-scrubbed haze of bubbly productivity. Here, there—faces she knew and names she said—Archie popped into domiciles with a howdy, hearing how so-and-so had seen better days, or that ‘my friend’s friend caught flu’. She did as she could—listened, mostly, which was what people needed.

Refection that eve was a specimen of parsimony: Zero Gee brew and Spacer’s Chaw. The Iconoclasts’ drinkhouse—and Graham’s seat of influence—often bustled, but when the boss-man was out, it came to a standstill, so it wasn’t surprising that Archie found her supper a lonely one in the uppermost story.

Comfortably situated in the empty building creaking like acres of old wood, it wasn’t for lacking provisions that she didn’t eat. Truth be spoke, she was antsy, which had her stomach stirred. No longer had she claim to ship nor crew. Captain Quaice not once saw any as belonging to her, but the promotion to Unreliable big-cheese had certainly inspired a protective affection. Her team—her world—as once on Earth: something to protect; something to nurture. And something to inevitably regret when they were gone, or taken away, or they’d just left.

With that rank rescinded, however, the lack of responsibility for their lives turned the crew into something else: an assemblage whose wellbeing didn’t throw her with fretting. Parvati, Felix; et all: people she **wanted** to worry about, not forced to out of obligation. Having lammed while circumstances threatened at perilous, though… Archie couldn’t fathom their feelings towards her, now.

Hence the queasing.

“Archimedes.”

Spitting her used chaw, Archie flashed pearlies for the one Unreliable she’d convinced herself she had no sweat over seeing.

“Captain Vicar. Nice night for it, eh?”

Lacking the cassock, leathered-up in Spacer’s wear of black, brown, and sobriety, Maximillian DeSoto sure fit the part of take-no-shit ship captain. Despite rigid posture and solemn self-possession, he had that swagger; a glint going at his eye, laughing braggart, yet you had to know where to look: passed the sermons and due-south from the niceties, near-bouts the balls and bravado, which, b’hoy, did he possess in spades.

Commanding ship looked good on him; _suited_ him. As Archie saw it, she’d done him a favor in offering him the Alex Hawthorne ident cartridge. It was a kindness he was making good on. Presently.

_By taking me from the Law-forsaken cesspit._

“Please.” Max winced. ”Just ‘vicar.’”

“Why?” Archie watched the man shuffle into the booth’s U-shaped seat across from her. “‘Captain’ too low and plebeian?”

“As a matter of fact,” Max smirked. Reaching for the waiting beer, he pressed it to his lips, adding sourly, “though, I suppose, it depends on who you ask.”

“Yeah? So who’s asking, _captain_?”

Max shot her a not-unfriendly side-eye. “Byzantium. We’ve just returned. Regardless of my lofty station, I’m still working-class; still a career man to the masses of our great capital. My hands might well be soiled with dirt, despite having lifted nothing heavier than the page.”

“Not so deferential to the man whose words say their fancy birthrights is fate, huh?”

“It isn’t my word,” Max reminded, threatening to grin.

However, affable smiles slumped towards nothingness, expired like so many shelved foodstuffs. Archie bit her lip; Max held his breath. They’d slipped easy into chit-chat when it oughtn’t have been so smooth. Considering their last parley, this whole sit-down should’ve smarted with (his) offended pride and (her) awful fear.

_“No! Please! Stop him!”_

Reginald Chaney’s ghost spoke softer these days than in those hours after Max had wrung his concluding breath. Archie couldn’t condone that kind of rage, but she accepted his need of secrets. They all had them: unsaids sleeping on the heart, a sort of armor with how thick they layered.

She forgave the secrets. She pardoned the lies. But it wasn’t Chaney’s demise nor Max’s misinformation regarding sought-for scholars which had made her maroon.

_“Max?” Creeping fore the melee, meddling was far from her intent. She knew the blood in the water wasn’t his; that the only one still capable of sound was him, so the growling spite was all Max. But she worried. Max knew when to stop; his fire was a controlled burn: something to singe away the ache and let grow something new. Yet, now, he wouldn’t—couldn’t—stop beating the begging man, and she worried; she..._

_“Max?”_

_He didn’t see her. It was his elbow that cracked her jaw as he pulled back to smite Reginald Chaney once more._

_Archie fell in the water. Gasping; shaking. She looked up at him, blind to but one thing._

_Max had hurt her._

“I was surprised to see you returning to Monarch,” Archie said, plumb tired by their clumsy pause.

“Dr. Welles’ contact, Carmen Imagawa, paid a great deal to get her off world. She spared us the details, but… I believe someone was on to her.”

“Anyone see you together?”

“No.” Max’s thumbs smoothed over the label of his bottle. “Still. We’ve hit a snag. Shortly after reaching port, I was recognized. Not by name, but enough that I’m... apprehensive of acting as the face of this little operation.”

Archie’s brows shot up. “Son-of-a.”

Max nodded. “Doctor Fenhill would fare similarly. Notoriety of any measure could jeopardize the breaching of Minister Clarke’s mansion, and we must get in.” He sighed. “And I trust neither Miss Holcomb nor Mr. Millstone to possess the charisma required for the job. That leaves you.”

Archie snorted.

“‘Charisma’? Just call it as is, DeSoto. It’s _bullshit_. The others can’t _bullshit_ like I can.”

“Then,” Max conceded with a sly smile, “your bullshit put into consideration, it **must** be you. I’ve planned things best I can. Once we’re planet-side, I’ll forge an identification cartridge for a menial position which will allow us access to the premises. Courier, company guard. A geomorphology and sediment specialist, perhaps.”

Archie’s brow slanted. “A gardener?”

“Every family in good-standing has one.”

Nodding, Archie mulled it over. “Why not just sneak in?”

“It isn’t only the getting in—it’s the getting out, as well.” Max sat back, arms across his chest. “Using the front door would be preferable. It gives us a legitimacy to inspect the home that we would otherwise lack.”

“But it’s chemicals we’re after. How’re we hoofing those out the front?”

“ _That_ is why we’ll need unfettered access to the house. It has been… refreshingly difficult to ascertain architectural plans from Byzantium’s planning bureau. The mansion’s layout remains a mystery to me.” Max appeared pensive, a stash of smug kept for when their eyes met. “Have you ever given thought to pursuing a career in the exciting field of water-damage inspection, Miss Quaice?”

Archie couldn’t shuck the surefire smile staking claim to lips and cheeks alike. Criminal minding took more than attitude abetted by a big ass hand-cannon: it required grey matter of a certain creative persuasion, and the vicar bore that in buckets. _Capability_ , she’d call it. And it’s what the Unreliable had been lacking: a _capable_ captain.

Rung down from ringleader, Archie knew she wasn’t made for such responsibility. If working with the water-treading Iconoclasts had clarified anything, it was that she wasn’t one for boat-steering. She certainly lacked the ambition, because, two weeks later, here she was bolting. But that didn’t mean she had no place in Halcyon, or on the Unreliable. Archie’s place seemed to be serving under Vicar Captain Maximillian DeSoto.

Although, not like _that_.

Probably not _like that_.

Not after their last conversation.

_“No, vicar”—she couldn’t even muster his name—”I am not— **will** not—go with you! This wasn’t ‘violent enthusiasm’. It was uncontrollable brutality like comes from an animal! You harp on about marauders, but how far are you from that, truly?” Putting her face in trembling hands, she moaned. “No, I am not going **anywhere** with you.”_

Yeah, probably not ‘like that’. Archie’s aches had cooled, but the vicar’s grudges rarely budged, Chaney’s fate a real teller in that regard. A man of great pride, obsessed with the control of chaos, he wouldn’t be forgiving her marauder-comparisons soon.

A stare shared, one that communicated it was time to go, an obstacle to their leaving unexpectedly cropped up: Graham, watching at the top of the stairs. His brawn and healthsome weight, added to his height, made a tank out of the man so soft-spoken. Glad as she was to be getting from his planet, Archie would miss him. As in all things, it had never meant to last, of course. Nothing good came without an expiry date, but he’d been warm on cold nights, and something to scratch her itches either physical or emotional.

“Graham.”

He returned her grin. “You’re still here. And with the enlightened vicar.”

Max managed a short nod. “Bryant.”

“Indulge me, friend, with a proper send-off of our illustrious captain. She will be missed by many.” Back to them as he prowled through the pantry, Graham piled multicolourous bottles plentifully in his arms. “Though, perhaps, just as she arrived when most needed, she will again return in the months to come. When, like the universe and its aims, she has figured out where she belongs.”

The white-knuckled grip at his beverage soothed. “I’ll drink to that,” Max said.

One by one, from the cradle of the Iconoclast’s hold, libations were set down, bringing the table to clutter. He scooched into the booth’s U-shaped seat on the other side of Archie, sandwiching her betwixt smug of various peculiarity. The smarm scintillated at Max’s eye, whilst on Graham it was around the mouth: a confident simper. Both Graham and Max shared a covetousness of intelligence; they yearned after that highbrow-born respect, a superiority which required carping like canids over a carcass of morals that was long beaten dead, horse-like. Men of their smartly persuasion often repeated arguments—it was how they reminded folk of their brilliance—however, said brilliance was a fickle, funny mistress. The hilarity being that to stake claim of ‘smartest-man-in-room’, there could be only one, and here there happened to be two.

Archie reached for the Purpleberry Wine.

“To me!”

Her toast met with the inarticulate, distracted rebuffing of men sizing each other up.

“To Archie,” she enthused in turn.

The evening _certainly_ had promise.


	2. Chapter 2

“How noble that a man with no belief in Divinity would strive so to see it achieved.”

Graham spouted it as one commending the incontestable colour of the sky—a verity which never changed, nor was challenged. That was the _oomph_ of Graham’s confidence: he wrote his own gospel born from and fed by a self-made spring of serenity.

This smug had the vicar sputtering. “ _Excuse_ me?” Such as is when water meets fire, the latter being more to Max’s hubris.

“Your goal,” Graham clarified. “To wake the Hope’s colonists.” Sipping liqueur, the lips that done the drinking smiled slight afterward. “Isn’t it obvious? For the universe to understand itself, it requires minds to contemplate it. With more colonists facilitating life—shaping existence, while, in turn, being molded themselves—the Eternal Truth becomes clearer.”

Max chuckled darkly. Whereas Graham’s belief balked at outside approval, the vicar’s brand of faith was sustained by varicoloured fonts; an affirmation which came from beyond himself, fueled by facts, and made by the ways of the world. Graham hardly saw farther than himself, finding great peace there, but Max—Max considered the universe.

“Marvelous point of view—for a cult mongerer. Of course you’d damn-well claim ‘more minds’ are required.”

“ _I_ require nothing, vicar.”

Graham lay an arm along the top of the booth, tucking behind Archie. Following the finishing of his inebriant, he collared another at the neck—Spectrum Vodka, this time—and prodded Max to parroting, neither man content to simply protest verbally over whose wit was bettermost. Consumption of stimulants seemed a means of measuring, too, their worth somehow having wound up at the bottom of a bottle, and Archie… She decided their discourse was healthsome, and drank to it.

Graham pulled closer to her, huffing satisfied, and smelling of very old soap. “I believe our Archimedes said it best. Divinity need be no more than the sum of its parts—than the collective, communal efforts of each soul in existence, including the colonists. I believe her terminology has been influenced by your religion, but the point stands. Every mind affects another, and another, yet that interplay never ceases. It is the universe learning _and growing_.” Laughing softly, the hand behind her head stroked through her hair as their eyes met. “Of course, she also makes arguments for the ‘Greater Good’, so one must approach that perspective with caution.” To Max, Graham added with much less affection, ”the idea of ‘good’ has no place in the Eternal Truth, you see. Every action, good or ill, is simply a facet of being.”

Max just blinked. “ **You** made a case for the Universal Equation?”

Flushing, Archie finished her beer with a blush and in a rush. She’d been fine playing bystander to their booze-catered bickering. Suddenly in the spotlight, though, rosy smatterings found her cheek. She hadn’t braced for this unbargained-for ambush. It was akin to being caught pants-down.

Considering Archie had survived both men seeing just that—ass out and proud—she attempted to spite an empty stomach sloshing with alcohol by sounding smartly.

“I was… No, no. Not arguing _for_ the Plan. Not truly.” Taking heavy sips from Graham’s vodka, she tried to remember her old argument. “I said the Greater Good, in hypothetics, is something everyone works at, though on a singular notion—a personal level. More’n not, we realize we need others to, say, scare up grub, or get warmth; to survive, said simply. We need others to survive. And going about it the easiest way is following a path of kindliness. Regardless of the rules of Scientism, or Philosophism, or whatever other isms you got. So, 1-2-3: we need others, act goodly, and get what we want.”

Max nodded knowingly. “Your karma.”

“It’s not _my_ nothing. I’ve said it before: you do decent for folk, you get it in return. Heck, that’s barter—that’s _capitalism_.” Archie jut her chin towards him after taking another smack of vodka. “Seems to me you should understand that.”

“And when you extend such charity to marauders?” Max drolled.

Graham cut in, nixing the vicar’s lofty smirk. “That is _precisely_ what I am saying!” How harmonious he sounded, his lips spoiled purple with drink. “The Eternal Truth is not limited by actions deemed good or bad by our conceptions. Good and bad fuel the workings of the universe! It is all the same!”

Archie nigh choked on newly decapped Rizzo sour. “It isn’t!”

Max also disagreed, albeit less sputteringly. “Certainly not. I’ll grant that such terms as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ might seem subjective to your average layman, but when concerned with the Greater Good—the very persistence of mankind as a species—there are clearly attribs… Attri _butes_ which cannot sustain our survival. In that respect, I believe karma and the Universal Equation can agree. The good curry favor with the like-minded, and creates mutualism. The bad have an entire system to oppose them: the Grand Architect's Law.”

“Karma cannot _conceivably_ complement the Equation more than the Truth,” Graham said. “Just as the universe was not brought forth by some invisible creator in the sky, neither was Archimedes’ system of measure.”

Accidentally knocking bottles to their side with his knuckles, Max pointed gripingly at Graham. “Yes, but that choice of right or wrong must be made by _someone_. **Preferably** someone more tangible than the abstract idea of an insensless universe! And the Grand Architect **is** that... such… Well, they aren’t a _person_ , per say. At one point they may—depending on one’s text of reference, of course—depending on some of the earlier commentary, perhaps—but at one point...”

Archie interrupted this confused clarifying. “Comments and texts are nothing,” she proclaimed. “Karma don’t depend on one, all-knowing whatever. It depends on whom it concerns—who’s getting righted or wronged.”

Graham, his arm behind her and his body close—hot, like always, through his layered clothing—said, “see? she agrees with me,” as though gaining ground.

“She agrees with neither of us, Bryant,” Max frowned.

Archie sighed, noticing, now, how the bubblies were brew-ha-ing through her blood. She was warm—it was so _warm_ in the room—and it wasn’t her body that inspired their jealous or spite—she might’ve embellished it, sure, but Max and Graham were averring for the sake of cerebral superiority. They were warring over her beliefs as though it was bigger than some silly observation of existence; something she cared about more than, say, where her next meal was come from, which she did not.

She’d have chewed over the oddness of past and present lovers arguing over her moral rights, but Archie was already slurring about something else.

“Karma is the comeuppance of past actions,” she asserted, blinking repeatedly. “It’s means of judgement. The Grand Plan doesn’t judge because it’s determined by fate. Right or wrong is all the Architect’s say-so. And with Philosophism, the universe created life to be a big ball of _whatever_. Karma is plenty more picky. In conclusion,” she held up her finger, smiling lopsided, “you’re both off a gourd.”

A gurgle in his throat, Graham swallowed his mouthful of drink, giggling prophetic at something thus far unsaid. His breath was sublime on her skin as he whispered, in her ear, “we’re each short a—a serial comma in a long list of… things— _items_ ,” which had Archie and Graham guffawing loudly together, an old inside-gag about punctuality newly fresh under the influence of booze.

As they kept finding it funny, Max didn’t cotton to being left out, according to his tone. “I’ll say.”

Graham’s joyfulous face unfurled like a flower, smoothing out, until every line or wrinkle was erased, and then it steeled. “Yes, yes, vicar-friend. The slings and insults aimed at my intelligence—my ‘idiocy range’, as I recall.” Although his expression shifted not, it was in the looking—how easily he did it—that expressed a surplus of sarcastic cocksurity. “I, too, remember the pain and shame of being judged by my intelligence. An intelligence as defined by the Board. Intelligence which demanded that I sit up straight; go here and there at their whim; that any thought of my own—any suggestion of individuality—was deemed a move of dissidence. Sometimes I do so long for the days of _submission_. And that is the strength of my belief: that I can admit envy.”

“Confusing modesty for conviction, eh? Can’t say I’m surprised.” Max’s smile was mean. “Your convoluted vernacular, which you claim to be enlightened truths, does nothing but circle around the indisputable fact. Which is—”hand aloft, he stifled Archie’s almost-interruption—”which is that you are so consumed with distancing yourself from the flock that you become as a raptidon, circling its prey. Your intellectualism—if it can, indeed, be called that—does not make you special. It makes you dangerous.”

“Dangerous?” Graham smiled. “From a Board-sanctioned vicar, I take that as a compliment.”

“Oh, I know. Any chance to spite the Grand Plan. No matter how grievous to your people’s wellbeing.”

Graham sighed. He took wine. He sounded so sure. “‘The Plan’ was created, as with a bedtime story, to soothe the fears of those miserable with their lot in life. They required a measure of assurance that someone, at some point in time, had decided this is what they deserved, or where they were meant to be. The Plan is nothing more than a balm for the confused and lonely, desperate for affirmation from on high.”

Max’s nostrils flared. ”The Plan was not created—it _creates_. It creates balance where you would prefer chaos. It provides justice when you—When you would **willingly** see your people suffer starvation, should it mean freedom from what you define as tyranny.” Laughing, Max sneered. “Oh, yes. And you think yourself so different, don’t you?”

“Let’s not pretend ‘the people’ are your concern, vicar,” Graham shot back. “I know well how you deal with those who’ve offended your pride, and it has nothing to do with _concern_.”

Turning, Max and Archie swapped awe-strucks: his, that she’d breached his confidence, and hers, that Max cared at all over her Chaney-based chatter. Despite no regard for those who hadn’t his respect, Archie’s snitching him stunned; hurt him. This wasn’t his customary reaction to a sucker-punch, yet here he sat, sad-eyed and frowning.

“Max does care about people.” She wasn’t apologizing to the man in question—she was setting Graham straight. “He’s helping Phineas. He’s helping the colonists. Against the Board.”

“Against the Board’s _members_ ,” Graham softly insisted. “Not the construct itself. And it is in the construct that we see the shackles.”

“It is the construct which creates order!” Max shouted.

“He’s not wrong, Max,” Archie mediated, placing a hand on his knee. “The Board **does** perpetrate ‘holy suffering’, if, wanting, you could call it. Makes up all manner of excuses as to why one’s misery is just.”

Max spoke only to her; reminded only her of these truths so personal to him. “Suffering is fighting against one’s place. Nothing more. The hungry, here; those stricken by sulfur sickness, or burns from just about everything on this Law-forgotten rock: were they to return to their Plan-ordained roles, their pains would reduce tenfold.” Looking to Graham, he grimaced. “But **this** charlatan leads them astray. Out of vanity; as a means to justify—”

“This wanton hostility of yours: how the gentle captain can withstand it, I shall never understand!” Graham half-laughed with bleary, beer-bugged eyes. “Your anger is a symptom of your frustrations, Maximillian. It is as clear as a still pond, the dregs visible within. You lash out against my good work because you, so close to your own faith, can see its cracks and this condemns you. Your aggression—”

Reaching across Archie, Max wrenched Graham’s collar in a riled-red fist.

Archie gasped. Sobriety had never been so liquid; time so elastic and subjective. Blinking at cobwebs to clear-headedness, she minded Max’s reckoning of her: a subtle side-eye that hardly manifested, as his peepers didn’t once pry themselves from the death-glare given to Graham, but still—she felt it. She felt Max weighing her reaction in the spine-slithering silence; felt her own heart pang with sadness of duplicity, betrayed by herself, as she’d promised Max’s outbursts no longer frightened, yet here she shivered.

_“Max.”_

Still settled on his thigh, her hand curled. She felt need to protect Graham, need to get away, and, most acutely, need to vomit.

Max’s Adam’s apple seethed against his collar. “I’ll show you aggression,” he said.

He yanked Graham towards him. The kiss was two inches from Archie’s face, sounding dry and looking sore. Graham protested for less than a second, and Max—Max was wild.

Whatever the evening had promised earlier, it was about to deliver.


	3. Chapter 3

Eyes closed, hands and mouths building need to wield as they would: with her head tossed back, and blackness abound, Archie rarely saw these events which transpired on her own skin. Sex had most often been that: a thing to hide in, to sigh and scream at, eyes closed—always closed—and if she looked it wasn’t for long.

Now she saw. Max kissed with his eyes opened. Graham did not.

Moaning, the Iconoclast cupped the face of he who descended upon him. Archie had savored that sound before—soothing her neck, spoiling her thighs—but she’d never _seen_ it spill from Graham. His eyes fluttered, those far-reaching lashes making a pretty dog-and-pony of it, the whole of him yielding as a yearling to the yoke, understanding the sensuality of the moment just as he hoped his universe, one day, would know its Eternal Truth.

He was beautiful.

He pulled away, lips thick with abuse.

“It seems you share appetites with our Archimedes,” Graham observed. “Heated debate often led us to the bedroom.”

Wry fading to fondness, Graham moved to wrangle her towards their fumblings, but Max pulled him back—back to arguing with lips on flesh. Crushed between their libido and the old booth seat, it was Max’s ardour that stole Archie from the moment in awe, then soonly threw her back in it. The vicar’s brow bent in fixation as he slipped his tongue between Graham’s lips over and again; the veins at his neck stood out; how he _strained_. Max, always reaching for more, took no exception in screwing: he was a greedy bastard—she’d known it—yet, to witness such...

“Not that I dislike minding the middle,” Archie said, smiling at the two, finely fellers smooching on her lap, “but perhaps we could sojourn to a place slightly roomier?”

The threesome cast towards Graham’s quarters—a closet of a space—while disrobing themselves, cold to the caring intimacy of baring bodies in a thing like affinity. This was meant to be rough, gruff stuff; as Graham moved towards Archie, Max grabbed the man’s arm, shoving his hand down the front of Graham’s snug smalls, and Graham huffed. With every exhale.

Loud and obscene, bothered breath became echoing half-hollars as Max jerked him off, deference out the door with Max aiming to resolve his own need by means of readying Graham; by pumping his fist; by bringing Graham to jibbering while grunting his own self, until, finally, Max extracted his hand and Graham wore a glisten of spit at his mouth’s corner, his body a sightly mess of twitching muscle, those gorgeously dimpled thighs a-quiver.

Max seemed nigh pleased. Pleased, probably, by the compliance to come next.

“Knees,” he ordered.

Archie mezmorized. Again, again, she mourned all the wrenched eyes of her past; the passive way in which, even when riding saddle, she’d given into the black instead of staying to see. Max was near-bouts kingly in his stature. And Graham, working from base to tip in soundful swallowing… gagging willfully... _Graham_ …

It nearbouts knocked her turvy-topsed in nostalgia. The insults dolled up as ‘rational discussion’, Max making way towards the Big Bliss through his partner’s easy obedience, and his partner well-satisfied by their cries: it matched their own maiden voyage them months back on the Unreliable. All pertinacious, Max had piloted that course as he did presently, instructing the what-where-hows while Graham licked-sucked-pleasured, just as Archie had once bent-spread-screamed before.

The creaking floorboards bellyached beneath Graham’s knees as the man pulled away. He said, “I believe we were to be giving _Archimedes_ the proper send-off,” whilst touching gingerly at his ginger-covered jaw.

Sidling stern, Archie begirded her arms ‘round Max’s torso, sighing to smell the familiar creams on skin which ran hotter than their ship’s engine. “I’m fine with watching you two come to an understanding. Leastways, that first part, anyhow.” Leaning closer to Max’s ear, she smarmed, “you know you’re going to have to return the favor eventually, though, eh?”

Max simply told her, “on the bed,” to which she replied, wistful, “oh, yeah—like old times.”

But unlike old times, Max hadn’t need to placate angry passions. He no longer required a little nicity, still desirous of a certain unnamed Captain to deliver him to Fallbrook. It was all on the table, and, as such, Archie lay out a spread, wiggling at the visual of two verily swellrific studs standing bedside while her ankles sprawled.

Before her stimulants-clouded mind could properly appreciate present happenings, Max had put his belly on the bed, thrown her legs over his shoulders, and began to glut.

“Max, I— _Max!_ ”

Back arching, eyes shut, she went to the black, sent there by a man unrelenting. Sucking her bud, breaking just so he could begin again, Archie’s thighs clamped about his ears. It was much to muchly; her limbs were a-hum and the pleasure-high was coming around the corner, rushing her already like water. Graham called for her— _”Archimedes”_ —and, bleary-eyed, she searched while helplessly squawking.

Graham watched, grinning sombre, content to see her tended. Something about that—that only her writhing felicity had him feeling his own self up, a meaty fist on his cock, tugging—his watching her—Graham watching as another slurped and spit at her clit, working up a whimper, Graham’s underwear at his reddened knees— _fuck_ —!

Max had pushed two fingers inside. Archie set sights on the face half-visible between her thighs, and she came.

Shoulders lurched; ankles kicked. In a room reeking of debauch and rut, she menaced Max with a smugly expression as he wiped his mouth, glistening like it were dew-wet.

“Guess I should've known a yapper so sweet with its wording could treat a body similarly.”

Graham spoke up before Max could profuse upon her a look of unamusement.

“Have you never sampled the delights of our Archimedes’ cup? I’m surprised, vicar.” The man grunted as he dislodged his smalls entirely. “Hers is the finest I’ve tasted.”

By a miracle of self-measure, Max’s mouth kept clapped, though he rolled his eyes. And, in rolling his eyes, Max’s bent brow judged every deed that had ever dragged her to Graham’s bed.

Archie laughed. _Fair point._

“Come on.”

Reaching out, beckoning, she was brought company, though Max keened with the creeks of age. Cradling betwixt her playfully shimmying legs, he filled her, slow to start, yet, as his cockhead wholly breached her lips, they respired together, sounding all flavors of gratified. With deference to her tilted womb, he hilted unentirely, wriggling just right, building something up that he’d soon have breaking with a cry, and Archie—Archie, moaning and fiddling with feel-good—Archie suddenly startled, swallowing back a sentiment.

It was starry, dreamy; sudsy as a warm bath. Max’s breath at her neck, hips swiveling, he made love-how-you-feel to her, but it seemed akin… Back with him, it was...

**_Home._ **

Archie gasped. She'd have hurled him off, were she of unmuddled mind. It was too heavy: the hassle over Chaney; this hearthsome notion like Max were a place to return to. Shifting charily, she checked her maudlin with frowning while Graham got on the bed.

“Are you alright?”

Max had read the _whatever_ riling in her eyes, and that was her witty retort: _whatever_. “I mean—I am,” she backtracked, clearing her throat. _When’d you get soft?_ “I only need... C’mon, Graham. Give it to him, already.”

And she laid back, closed her eyes, and felt.

Max went deeper despite himself as Graham eased in—she felt that. She felt him tense; heard that exhilarated, sanguine whimper, though, mayhaps, he’d stretched a stitch more than he’d liked.

Beyond the darkness, she felt Max thrust, filling her with cock, then satisfying himself on Graham’s. The mattress shifted as the lead was stolen, leaving the vicar to huff and still, his body edged easily by the sensations at his member and hole. His snarl simmered to a hiss— _“slower”_ —while the wet plopping of flesh on flesh found every cranny of the room, up to the barely-abled yellowed lightbulb.

Reaching for completion, Archie’s eyes shut harder, leaving it all out: the men piled on top; the bedspring squeal. Legs spreading wider to take everything that was about to fill her with bliss, she heard a proffer like a plea, begging not for his benefit but for hers.

“Look.”

Balking better judgement, she did. His forehead was flush on hers. The moment their eyes tangled up, she fell.

_“Max.”_

Her arms held harder around him. It was quick.

Graham and Max met their sublime, sticky oblivion together, she supposed—Archie lay there, stomach squirming, senseless to them while sticking Focusitol tablets on her tongue. Reality of circumstance distracted her from any current sitches; until Graham offered his darling farewells, she let the afterglow gleam so bright she blinded, head dizzied on the pillow.

Graham was out the door for some ticks of the timepiece before Archie, at last, mourned whatever sorry, supine see-you-later she’d sourced him. But she had bones: bones to bury, or confess about. And Graham would forgive.

Max was dressing while she lay on the bed.

“What is it?” he asked, spotting her watching.

Legs off the cot-side, she sighed. “What the hump, Max?”

“Considering the, uh, _typical_ aftermath of our more querulous meetings of the mind, are you surprised I conceded to fuck Graham?”

Archie shrugged, finding her feet to sway on them. “I mean, seemed it was the other way around. Fairly settled **he** was doing the fucking. But I meant me. What the hump... **_me_**.”

Max’s glancing roved her over, toe to nose, so studious in his arcadian musing. Focused on finishing his collar, he then approached, face flat in serenity and duds decidedly perfect.

“You’re assuming I spent the last fortnight stewing over what was said following Chaney’s… accident.” It weren’t a smile on his lips: it was amnesty. “I didn’t.”

“Why?” Archie frowned. “We’ve spat… Every day we were on the ship, we... “ She'd thought she'd known him—made a map of his motives to follow for her heart's safety, but now she doubted. “We argued ‘bout where to set _gear_ down. In the lockers; in the common. It was a big to-do. So why aren’t you steamed about this?”

“Because **_I_** am not the wounded party.”

Bewilderment winded her.

“I am… I am begging your forgiveness,” Max continued. “I was obsessed. Blinded by my need for retribution. You offered me support; sanction. And I lied to you.” Brow piquing, his expression slied towards the habitual confidence. “I’ll admit, I never expected tonight to turn out like this, but now that it has— _well_.”

His fingers drifted down her cheek in a dry-run. Quick, unsure—of her reaction, principally, not the finely formality behind.

Courage steeled, Max cupped her face.

“Vicar… Max…”

Archie had a hundred things on her heart, and didn’t want to say a one. Like a preying animal, a particular point stalked and circled close to the surface— _you knew you weren't leaving the ship; why didn't you tell me?!_ —but she scared it off.

“I cotton that I’m on the crew, now. And grateful for it. But us… We…” _S_ _he lied._ “I wasn’t banking on a big affair. At the get-go, nor after. If we continue as before, you’ll get no complaint, but beyond that—”

Max chuckled. “I am not after a marriage contract, Archimedes.”

Her head tilted, brainpan introspecting. Apparently trying for drama where there was none, she burst with big, big laughing at her silly, stupid self.

“Of course not.” Fingers fastened to his hips, she flaunted liberal bedroom eyes. “I mean, with this body… What more could you need, preacher?”

Max shook his head at the pester that was Archimedes Quaice. “For you **_not_ **to call me that.”

She whispered, breathily, “then take me home, _captain_.”


End file.
